The present invention relates to an apparatus, a method and a program for simultaneous video-signal recording and reproduction in which video and audio signals broadcast on a tuned TV channel are recorded on a storage medium such as a hard disk and at the same time reproduced from the storage medium.
Video signal recording/reproducing apparatus using randomly-accessible storage media such as hard disks have functions of recording several TV programs at the same time, recording and reproducing video signals now on air at the same time (simultaneous recording and reproduction), and so on, thanks to short access time for recording and reproduction.
The video signal recording/reproducing apparatus with a simultaneous recording/reproduction function are available for cache reproduction (playback) for watching a TV program now on air while continuously time-shifting the program from the present to the past, catch-up reproduction in which video signals recorded in the past are reproduced so that the signals catch up with the video signal recorded now, and so on.
These recording/reproducing apparatus will be on the market with ordinary VCRs (Video Cassette Recorders) used as a time-shift machine, thanks to the functionality explained above.
Users usually watch recorded video signals on a monitor TV to which the signals are supplied from a TV tuner installed in an ordinary VCR. It is possible to watch pictures recorded now. It is however impossible to know how the video signals are being recorded on a video tape, for example, whether the video signals are recorded at a high quality or with no failures.
On the contrary, the video signal recording/reproducing apparatus with a simultaneous recording/reproduction function can proceed with recording while reproducing video signals recorded now in real time, thus users are allowed to know any recording failures in real time, for recording with the least failures.
The simultaneous recording/reproduction function is very convenient for users using hard disks because he or she can watch past scenes with simple operations when he or she wants to watch particular scenes during recording or has missed some scenes.
In meeting demands for the simultaneous recording/reproduction function, a personal video recorder (PVR) has been under development.
With the simultaneous recording/reproduction function, users may watch several TV programs almost at the same time while often switching to other TV channels, thus the TV programs being recorded randomly on a hard disk depending on how often switched.
Such frequent channel switching is done by users while watching several TV programs. When watching these recorded TV programs later, users could have uncomfortable feeling against randomly recorded TV programs with lacking continuity for each program. Users could have more uncomfortable feeling against randomly recorded scenes of different category of TV programs than intermittently recorded scenes of one TV program.
Hard-disk recorders must have a variety of functionality for use as a time-shift machine like ordinary VCRs in addition to cache reproduction and catch-up reproduction.